While the eye-catching title may suggest a hot new shade of lipstick, the contents are solid, down-to-earth insights into...
A brisk survey of how human emotions, thoughts and behaviors are shaped by such seemingly small factors as colors as well as such major ones as culture and weather.
Alter (Marketing/New York Univ. Stern School of Business) divides the factors into three categories: those that arise from within us; those that emerge from our connections with our social world; and those from the environment—the world around us. After launching with the now decades-old discovery that the color pink can reduce aggression and anxiety, the author looks at these three categories, starting with the effects that names, labels and symbols have on our perception of people, companies and organizations. Alter’s findings are intriguing: Children randomly labeled as “academic bloomers” did indeed bloom as teachers’ expectations of them changed. During one day of trading, the stocks of companies with easy-to-pronounce ticker names did better than those with unpronounceable names. In the second part, the author considers factors in the social world, describing experiments that reveal differences in behavior when someone is alone or in the presence of other people, finding a basis for racism in a deeply ingrained human fear of difference and looking at cultural differences in the understanding of concepts such as individualism. The third part includes surprising data on the effects of colors, artificial lighting, sunlight, outdoor settings, noise and weather conditions. Alter peppers his text with illustrative anecdotes, incidents, studies and characters, making the book highly readable and informative. The author occasionally challenges folk wisdom—contrary to the popular notion that in spring, a young man’s fancy turns to love, Alter cites research showing that testosterone levels rise in the cold winter months—and he elucidates the reasons behind other taken-for-granted beliefs.
While the eye-catching title may suggest a hot new shade of lipstick, the contents are solid, down-to-earth insights into why we think, feel and act the way we do.Pub Date: March 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-1594204548
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Deeply thought-provoking and unexpectedly lyrical.
From the author of The Myth of Sanity (2001), a remarkable philosophical examination of the phenomenon of sociopathy and its everyday manifestations.
Readers eager for a tabloid-ready survey of serial killers, however, will be disappointed. Instead, Stout (Psychiatry/Harvard Medical School) busies herself with exploring the workaday lives and motivations of those garden-variety sociopaths who are content with inflicting petty tyrannies and small miseries. As a practicing therapist, she writes, she has spent the past 25 years aiding the survivors of psychological trauma, most of them “controlled and psychologically shattered by individual human perpetrators, often sociopaths.” Antisocial personality disorder, it turns out, occurs in around four percent of the population, so it’s not too surprising that treating their victims has kept Stout quite busy for the past quarter-century. Employing vivid composite character sketches, the author introduces us to such unsavory characters as a psychiatric administrator who specializes in ingratiating herself with her office staff while making her patients feel crazier; a captain of industry who killed frogs as a child and is now convinced he can outsmart the SEC; and a lazy ladies’ man who marries purely to gain access to his new wife’s house and pool. These portraits make a striking impact, and readers with unpleasant neighbors or colleagues may find themselves paying close attention to Stout’s sociopathic-behavior checklist and suggested coping strategies. In addition to introducing these everyday psychopaths, the author examines why the rest of us let them get away with murder. She extensively considers the presence or absence of conscience, as well as our discomfort with questioning those seen as being in power. Stout also ponders our willingness to quash our inner voice when voting for leaders who espouse violence and war as a solution to global problems—pointed stuff in a post-9/11 political climate.
Deeply thought-provoking and unexpectedly lyrical.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2005
ISBN: 0-7679-1581-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The book would have benefited from a tighter structure, but it’s inspiring and relatable for readers with depression.
The creator and host of the titular podcast recounts his lifelong struggles with depression.
With the increasing success of his podcast, Moe, a longtime radio personality and author whose books include The Deleted E-Mails of Hillary Clinton: A Parody (2015), was encouraged to open up further about his own battles with depression and delve deeper into characteristics of the disease itself. Moe writes about how he has struggled with depression throughout his life, and he recounts similar experiences from the various people he has interviewed in the past, many of whom are high-profile entertainers and writers—e.g. Dick Cavett and Andy Richter, novelist John Green. The narrative unfolds in a fairly linear fashion, and the author relates his family’s long history with depression and substance abuse. His father was an alcoholic, and one of his brothers was a drug addict. Moe tracks how he came to recognize his own signs of depression while in middle school, as he experienced the travails of OCD and social anxiety. These early chapters alternate with brief thematic “According to THWoD” sections that expand on his experiences, providing relevant anecdotal stories from some of his podcast guests. In this early section of the book, the author sometimes rambles. Though his experiences as an adolescent are accessible, he provides too many long examples, overstating his message, and some of the humor feels forced. What may sound naturally breezy in his podcast interviews doesn’t always strike the same note on the written page. The narrative gains considerable momentum when Moe shifts into his adult years and the challenges of balancing family and career while also confronting the devastating loss of his brother from suicide. As he grieved, he writes, his depression caused him to experience “a salad of regret, anger, confusion, and horror.” Here, the author focuses more attention on the origins and evolution of his series, stories that prove compelling as well.
The book would have benefited from a tighter structure, but it’s inspiring and relatable for readers with depression.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-20928-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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